Does anyone know where the Bachmann diesels are made or is that a company secret. (Atlas from China, Kato from Japan). I wonder who does the actual design.
Atlas and Kato are terrific machines.
China
Visit Kader's site. They have an incredible state of the art operation AutoCAD).
Now I understand how they improve a design in Hong Kong, then ship the prototype off to their Chinese factory in Dongguan of the Canton Provence and mass produce.
http://www.kader.com.hk/
You can learn more about Dongguan here in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongguan
Personally, I know little about Dongguan except the city is famous for its rice vermicelli!
Most of the newer B-mann is made in China.
Atlas is mostly made in China, although some of it has come from South Korea (VO-1000s).
Kato comes from Japan.
Micro-Ace and Tomix are mostly from Japan, but they do have some stuff done in China.
Inter-Mountain is mostly made in China.
Walthers/Life-Like is mostly made in China.
Model Power is made both in China and South Korea.
The only large manufacturer that still makes their stuff in the USA, of which I am aware, is MicroTrains. Still, the motors for their FTs come from somewhere in Asia.